....and bad news. (Hint: Food Poisoning)

Honestly, you can't make this stuff up!

Yesterday, I wrote about how I hadn't had a crash in five weeks.  I noted that I felt a possible crash coming on at the time of writing, but I was hopeful that it was another false alarm.

About two hours later, I was sitting in front of the TV innocently munching from a tub of mixed nuts from Trader J__'s.  Within five minutes, I started to feel stick to my stomach, so I stopped eating the nuts.  For the rest of the evening, I felt slightly sick to my stomach, but the feeling wasn't too concerning.  It felt more-or-less like the discomfort when one has eaten too much...almost like bloating.

I went to bed around 8:30.

At 10 I woke up with a raging storm in my gut and full fledged crash symptoms.  I snuck out of bed and went downstairs to the garage and grabbed a bucket.  I then spent the next three hours lying in a fetal position on the couch, occasionally vomiting into the bucket (and then, of course, cleaning out the bucket.)  At the risk of saying too much, I was also running to the bathroom frequently due to plumbing problems on the other end.

After a few hours, the stomach storm died down enough to attempt sleep, but we all know that's just the beginning of another battle.  Once the crash symptoms have been awaken, sleep usually proves elusive.  True to form, I lay on the couch attempting sleep for the rest of the night but never quite achieving it.

So now I'm home from work today with all the usual (for me) crash symptoms: body aches, muscle twitches, shortness of breath, tachycardia, and of course extreme flu-like malaise.  This not a good week for me to miss work because we have a deadline on a big motion opposition.  Luckily, I got ahead of the game and drafted the vast majority of the opposition last week, just in case another crash came along.  (I manage my time much better now with ME/CFS).

My co-workers will have to pick up the slack - there's simply no way I could be at work in my current condition.  I can barely get out of bed to take care of my basic needs.

What did I learn from all this?  First, that it was an incredibly unlucky coincidence to get food poisoning a few hours after writing about how great things were going.

Second, I'm not surprised that the food poisoning made my stomach feel bad, but I am a little surprised that it triggered a full-blown crash.  One thing I didn't mention in yesterday's post was that, over the last five weeks, I actually caught a cold that didn't trigger a crash.  I got the usual cold symptoms, but not the full-blown crash.  This was a first since getting ME/CFS.  I was hoping it was a sign that my immune system had healed itself somewhat.  

Now I know that the immune balance I seem to have achieved over the last five weeks is still delicate.  Any moderate to severe insult to my immune system is enough to trigger a crash.  The true test will be in how long it lasts and if it remains as severe as it is right now.  I'm hoping to wake up tomorrow morning after a full night's rest and feel at least 50% better.  We'll see....